


Residue

by mayachain



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Character Study, Community: mini_nanowrimo, Culture, Extinction, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’m still keeping secret what I think no one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets.” ~ Rigoberta Menchú</p>
            </blockquote>





	Residue

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to whoever suggested the quote as a prompt for **mini_wrimo**!

There are many things about Satedan society that in a few years’ time nobody will be left to remember. No-one who is not alive today will ever know. 

The few survivors Ronon has met are doing their best to make a living with the five-odd peoples that have taken them in. Most of them were too young to have learned more than a portion of all there once was in any case. Like Katta. Like Tyre. Like Ronon himself.

There are books back on Sateda. There are paintings. There are sculptures and buildings and fields, vehicles and weapons, clothes, kitchens, restaurants, municipal towers, hospitals, burial grounds, sports courts, training sites, schools, forges, factories, universities. There are recordings that Ronon is convinced McKay could convert and have Chuck broadcast on the radio. There are even a few data crystals. 

Much of what is left is rotted, cracked, burned, or otherwise destroyed. Ronon has learned about and met Earth archeologists who have reconstructed so much more with less.

And there are survivors. They may number less than fifty, their knowledge may be limited, but their resumés would range from basic to higher to specialized education. They can read the language, make sense of obscure dialects. Furthermore, they have their own memories.

Dr. Corrigan would recruit a team and make the recovery of Satedan culture his lifelong mission, if Ronon asked. If Ronon asked, McKay would let the man. McKay would even let archeology ascend to a real science if Ronon, or maybe even one of the other survivors the team has met, asked him. 

Ronon doesn’t ask either of them.

It’s not that there’s nothing to find. There is plenty to find. While it will become more difficult, there will still be plenty to find in ten, twenty, a hundred years. It’s not that Ronon doesn’t sometimes long for a special dish, a certain book, clothes from the store behind the central hospital. Weapons. Oh, the weapons.

It’s not that the Stargate – Ring – was blown up. Ronon only has to file a request and he will get a ship. From Sheppard. Lorne. Caldwell. Carter. Even Woolsey. By the same token, a word to either of these Earthers would get his native planet a new Ring. Gate.

It’s that Sateda is dead. 

A swarm of scientists could recover what is left, catalogue it, write it all up. They could. Lanteans could record all the memories that Ronon and the other survivors have left.

They cannot bring their people back. 

They cannot give Ronon his life back.

Except. 

They did.

And that will have to be enough.

So Ronon shares stories with his team. Sings a few songs. Whispers words he has not spoken aloud since Melena died into Amelia’s ears. Shows Kanaan how to prepare _m’tenga_ and cooks it himself once in a while, keeps the important holidays with Torren. Barters with the little colony on ~~PX2-697~~ Rranagus for a ceremonial knife and ink, gives out some of his aunt’s recipes to Katta for a proper shirt. Employs tactics he learned at the academy and teaches them to John’s marines. Combines what he remembers of home with what he has learned and makes something new. And some fragments, like the way his mother dyed her hair proudly and gifted her son with his very own graduation prayer, he keeps to himself, the melody sacred as it was always meant to be. 

There are elements that survive. It could be more if Ronon made the effort, if just one of the others did, if somebody from their new lives insisted.

A generation from now, Sateda as it once was in its entirety will be forgotten. Ronon has made his peace with that. Among four peoples there are sons and daughters. Their descendants will learn what remains important.

.


End file.
